|
Zeerust posted:
Yeah, I think what the example was is if a player manages to min-max his character so hard that his AC is way higher than it should be for his level. Then the GM can either have the enemies almost never hit, which kind of breaks the game, or they can give the enemies an accuracy boost to compensate, which will make the game work again, but kind of invalidates the player's choices. Now it's not the best example because there are multiple players in combat so buffing the enemies to hit the one guy's AC means hitting everyone else way too often, and the better solution is to just not worry about hurting Mr. Indestructible - his friends are still squishy enough and the player can get enjoyment out of being unhittable. But if you replace AC with certain skills, it becomes an issue again. And an issue I ran into in 4e all the time in Epic tier. If I made a task difficult enough that the person who maxed that skill wouldn't auto-succeed, then everyone else would auto-fail. They were basically superheros: if the thing is so heavy that Superman has trouble with it, it will just be completely impossible for Batman to even budge. So that seems okay, but then you get a weird question: the GM put a door here that only superman is strong enough to get through, as long as they roll a 10+. But if Superman's player had put 5 fewer points into Athletics, and still been super-strong, what would the GM have done? Would they have set the target number to the same level, meaning that Superman could only lift it on a 15+? Or would they have just set it 5 points lower so Superman still succeeds on a 10+? The first seems pretty rough: even the guy who put his focus in being strong (but didn't totally min-max) is probably going to suck at feats of strength. The second makes the player's optimization not just pointless but actually counterproductive because they could have spent those points on other things. Honestly, I don't think it's actually a problem in practice because so much of it is dependent on weird counterfactuals. IME the bigger problem was when I'd set something up to be hard and then have Dan say "I don't even need to roll. I auto-succeed." And then I'd recalibrate my expectations and set a number that I thought would be fairly easy for Arthur only to have him say "easy?! I'd have to roll a 19 to make that!" Anyway, I think the whole issue is in making the GM set target numbers based on difficulty. Because obviously difficulty depends on the character. What does impossible mean? Impossible for anyone? Or just impossible for normal people but still maybe possible by a person with superhuman powers? From a game design perspective, the solution is easy: either get rid of target numbers entirely (like Strike!) or give the GM explicit and objective rules for setting target numbers. That takes work on the part of the designer, but it's work that can either be done once by an expert or will instead be done over and over every time anyone runs the game, by enthusiastic non-experts.
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 04:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 19:14 |
|
|
Jimbozig posted:Anyway, I think the whole issue is in making the GM set target numbers based on difficulty.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 04:15
|
|
|
Ilor posted:That's one of the things I really like about most PbtA games. The rules aren't there to assign difficulty, they're there to provide interesting consequences when the players attempt something. "Difficulty" generally lives in the severity of the consequences, not in the statistics of the attempt. Yeah! I always struggled with setting difficulty in 4e, then I read Mouse Guard and loved that it was more-or-less objective based on listed factors for each Skill, and then I read Apocalypse World and realized you didn't need it at all. All credit to Vincent Baker on that one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 07:24
|
|
|
e: removed, hadn't seen reene, posted without patience, dishonored the sietch
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 07:39
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So that seems okay, but then you get a weird question: the GM put a door here that only superman is strong enough to get through, as long as they roll a 10+. But if Superman's player had put 5 fewer points into Athletics, and still been super-strong, what would the GM have done? Would they have set the target number to the same level, meaning that Superman could only lift it on a 15+? Or would they have just set it 5 points lower so Superman still succeeds on a 10+? The first seems pretty rough: even the guy who put his focus in being strong (but didn't totally min-max) is probably going to suck at feats of strength. The second makes the player's optimization not just pointless but actually counterproductive because they could have spent those points on other things. That's exactly what I'm struggling with most of the time, especially with the continuous encounter issue. If I have decided to keep creating goblins in the fortress such that the PCs will be on low HP by the time they finally conquer it, then there was no point the PCs optimising HP or even certain attack values, and as you say that can domino through to other aspects of that build. But that then further bleeds out to other aspects, which is why modules are valuable. Say there's a locked door with a complex lock that Batman can pick. If Batman hadn't been in the party, would I still have placed the locked door, knowing that likely nobody would get through it? If not, then Batmas hasn't contributed anything, because he only solves the problem he created by his presence. A module can get around that because it's played by a range of groups, so it can say, here's a bonus for parties that have a Batman, and if they don't, well maybe they do better somewhere else. But when I'm just writing for my own group, placing the locked door for a party that can't open it is just a predetermined failure and taunt. Ironically the reason you mention is the reason why I pretty much gave up on superhero gaming except for a vague interest Masks, but that's tricky. Anyone here know the Book of Lenses by Jesse and Schell? It's written for computer game design, but can apply to RPGs too. Masks has a problem with what that book calls Resonance - the desire for the game to be a particular way. Kids who pretend to be Spiderman want to pretend to be awesomely agile and swing through the city and shoot webs; they don't want to pretend to be torn by moral quandries between the safety of their mundane loved ones and their superhero identity. (Also, XD's game is making me appreciate how many of the issues I had with PbtA are actually issues with PbtA spin-offs that aren't as well designed as AW was and haven't had the benefit of a revision pass.) hyphz fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jun 1, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:08
|
|
|
hyphz posted:That's exactly what I'm struggling with most of the time, especially with the continuous encounter issue. hyphz posted:But that then further bleeds out to other aspects, which is why modules are valuable. Say there's a locked door with a complex lock that Batman can pick. If Batman hadn't been in the party, would I still have placed the locked door, knowing that likely nobody would get through it? A module can get around that because it's played by a range of groups, so it can say, here's a bonus for parties that have a Batman, and if they don't, well maybe they do better somewhere else. But when I'm just writing for my own group, placing the locked door for a party that can't open it is just a predetermined failure and taunt. hyphz posted:Ironically the reason you mention is the reason why I pretty much gave up on superhero gaming except for a vague interest Masks, but that's tricky. Anyone here know the Book of Lenses by Jesse and Schell? It's written for computer game design, but can apply to RPGs too. Masks has a problem with what that book calls Resonance - the desire for the game to be a particular way. Kids who pretend to be Spiderman want to pretend to be awesomely agile and swing through the city and shoot webs; they don't want to pretend to be torn by moral quandries between the safety of their mundane loved ones and their superhero identity. this passage in particular is pretty relevant  there's even an entire playbook, the janus, built specifically around the conflict between heroics and the secret identity
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:26
|
|
|
Serf posted:the opening 5 pages of masks lays out what it is and what it is about. if you don't want the drama of dealing with being a young person struggling to find their way in a world of adults, then the game is not what you're looking for. there's even an entire playbook, the janus, built specifically around the conflict between heroics and the secret identity Absolutely. But ultimately, if that game doesn't resonate enough to get players, and the games that do - the older school ones like M&M or even Hero - inevitably have rules systems that break down due to the massive variance of specialization they allow, then there isn't much to be done but shelve the genre. Which is not really a desirable outcome from my POV nor a success for the industry. (Disclaimer: I haven't read Champions Now.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:28
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Absolutely. But ultimately, if that game doesn't resonate enough to get players, and the games that do - the older school ones like M&M or even Hero - inevitably have rules systems that break down due to the massive variance of specialization they allow, then there isn't much to be done but shelve the genre. Which is not really a desirable outcome from my POV nor a success for the industry. (Disclaimer: I haven't read Champions Now.) so its not a problem with masks, its a problem with what you wanted masks to be e: also, read the sentinels rpg, its very good
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:30
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:34
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Absolutely. But ultimately, if that game doesn't resonate enough to get players, and the games that do - the older school ones like M&M or even Hero - inevitably have rules systems that break down due to the massive variance of specialization they allow, then there isn't much to be done but shelve the genre. Which is not really a desirable outcome from my POV nor a success for the industry. (Disclaimer: I haven't read Champions Now.) From what you've said before, it seems like they only 'break down' because you let your characters hyper-specialize and then refuse to throw anything outside of their specialty at them. Someone choosing to be useless against plants in exchange for ultimate power elsewhere has made a conscious choice as a player to give themselves a competence gap, and as a GM you are allowed to use that against them. Having to face their weaknesses is a staple of superhero stories, after all!
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 17:36
|
|
|
Tsilkani posted:From what you've said before, it seems like they only 'break down' because you let your characters hyper-specialize and then refuse to throw anything outside of their specialty at them. Someone choosing to be useless against plants in exchange for ultimate power elsewhere has made a conscious choice as a player to give themselves a competence gap, and as a GM you are allowed to use that against them. Having to face their weaknesses is a staple of superhero stories, after all! It is, but the crunchier systems don't really focus that much on weaknesses and don't have good support for working around them. Like, M&M will let you spend hours working out how to increase the power of your blaster, but if you take "ineffective against plants" as a disadvantage there's no detail about it or way to specify any ways you might work around that weakness other than creating yet more powers that lack that disadvantage. I once joked that there should be an RPG where all the stats are inverted - Weakness, Clumsiness, Frailty, etc - and you choose your weaknesses instead of your strengths - on the grounds that they will tend to contribute more to the focus of play time than strengths will, since strengths just resolve problems quickly. But again there would be a massive resonance failure because players want to play "a big strong kick-rear end warrior", not "a guy who's helpless in front of a wizard". That's why I find Masks interesting, because it actively dives into that paradox and admits that inevitably the bad things about your character's life are the play focus, but in doing so it puts off a ton of potential players. (Then again resonance comes from all kinds of weird places it seems. Last Saturday I encouraged the PF2e players to set up Roll20 macros to add up all their modifiers and the Warrior complained that "if it's just running macros we could just call it World of Warcraft". So, um, apparently walking through the math step-by-step reading it out as he went was a fundamental property of the TRPG experience for him? I just don't know, but I do know that he's very much about the resonance, which I think was part of his issue with Strike.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:05
|
|
|
hyphz posted:I once joked that there should be an RPG where all the stats are inverted - Weakness, Clumsiness, Frailty, etc - and you choose your weaknesses instead of your strengths - on the grounds that they will tend to contribute more to the focus of play time than strengths will, since strengths just resolve problems quickly. But again there would be a massive resonance failure because players want to play "a big strong kick-rear end warrior", not "a guy who's helpless in front of a wizard". Your ideas are good and you give games more thought than your entire group of RPG fundamentalist dipsticks put together.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:12
|
|
|
hyphz posted:(Then again resonance comes from all kinds of weird places it seems. Last Saturday I encouraged the PF2e players to set up Roll20 macros to add up all their modifiers and the Warrior complained that "if it's just running macros we could just call it World of Warcraft". So, um, apparently walking through the math step-by-step reading it out as he went was a fundamental property of the TRPG experience for him? I just don't know, but I do know that he's very much about the resonance, which I think was part of his issue with Strike.) that's a real stupid thing to say, just so you know. utterly bizarre. macros are a timesaving feature, not some fundamental shift in how you play roleplaying games
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:21
|
|
|
Does he also knap his own tools from flint and eat only food that he's tracked across the frozen tundra for 5 days before beating it to death with a rock?
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:24
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:27
|
|
|
Serf posted:that's a real stupid thing to say, just so you know. utterly bizarre. macros are a timesaving feature, not some fundamental shift in how you play roleplaying games No, it struck me as being odd as well, but I have trouble getting a read on him. My opinion has always been that he's caught by the difficult position of wanting to both feel challenged but also that the character he's inhabiting is goddamn awesome. And heck, I'd like to be able to give him that or to have it too when I'm playing, so I can't really call that unreasonable. Video games can do it by kinda cheating with visual excitement (or they can just not do it and have the problems of fighting games)
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 18:58
|
|
|
So I realize the point of this thread is to dive deep into the corner cases, but the answer to 99% of these problems is to just make sure there are multiple paths to "success". And you can do that in D&D as well as PbtA, etc. So what if there's a door that only Batman can pick? He's not in your party, big deal. You can't pick that lock. If Batman is in your party, his player feels validated. If he's not, it's only a problem if that's your defined path to success. Wonder Woman can punch through the door. Superman can punch through the wall. The Flash can run up the wall outside and go in the window (or phase through the door). Lex Luthor can just bribe a guard for a key. I think there absolutely can (and usually should) be things in a given adventure that are "doable in the universe, but not by the PCs". As long as they have one viable path toward success. Because then, when a group of three players who always struggle with locks invite a fourth player to join who has locks, that fourth player's choices are validated immediately.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:20
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:26
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:Yeah, I think what the example was is if a player manages to min-max his character so hard that his AC is way higher than it should be for his level. Then the GM can either have the enemies almost never hit, which kind of breaks the game, or they can give the enemies an accuracy boost to compensate, which will make the game work again, but kind of invalidates the player's choices.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:32
|
|
|
hyphz posted:If I have decided to keep creating goblins in the fortress such that the PCs will be on low HP by the time they finally conquer it, then there was no point the PCs optimising HP or even certain attack values, and as you say that can domino through to other aspects of that build. Well, one "point", or rather difference, is that the PCs chewed through more enemies before they ran low on HP. Does that make the players feel more badass? Did the tension rise as one encounter built on from the previous? It's true that from the perspective of the math, you're just pushing numbers into different piles in order to reach the same equilibrium point. But from the perspective of the gaming table, there ought to be some kind of difference in "feel" for how things went. This is perhaps an argument in favor of finding something less boring to responsively add challenge than just throw in some more random goblins. You can add to the challenge by also adding to the interest and fun of the adventure, surely? We're all remembering that the point of the gaming wasn't just to make some numbers go up here, accumulate some numbers in that box, tick off some xps, add a new item to the inventory. Right? There's some kind of "fun" being had, in the individual scenes and in the overall game, that is contributed-to by the components the GM added to the game? When batman unlocks the door that had a DC set specifically to make it challenging but not impossible for him to unlock, yeah, you fiddled numbers in response to his character sheet, but... does the player not feel some sense that the character is cool for having done it? Could you describe the lock on the door in a way that makes the feat sound impressive?
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:42
|
|
|
hyphz posted:(Then again resonance comes from all kinds of weird places it seems. Last Saturday I encouraged the PF2e players to set up Roll20 macros to add up all their modifiers and the Warrior complained that "if it's just running macros we could just call it World of Warcraft". So, um, apparently walking through the math step-by-step reading it out as he went was a fundamental property of the TRPG experience for him? I just don't know, but I do know that he's very much about the resonance, which I think was part of his issue with Strike.) How would the group know how well he's managing to stack his modifiers if they don't have to listen to him read them out? I never played PF2e but I am reasoning by analogy to some people I played Champions with, who derived significant pleasure from rolling huge handfuls of dice.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:42
|
|
|
yeah we're not there but I kinda suspect a lot of the General's misbehavior at the table is performative
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 19:47
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:01
|
|
|
I feel like these names are way cooler than the people they refer to.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:I feel like these names are way cooler than the people they refer to. They're from Game Night, or variants of those. Read Game Night. It's great. CitizenKeen posted:So what if there's a door that only Batman can pick? He's not in your party, big deal. You can't pick that lock. If Batman is in your party, his player feels validated. If he's not, it's only a problem if that's your defined path to success. Wonder Woman can punch through the door. Superman can punch through the wall. The Flash can run up the wall outside and go in the window (or phase through the door). Lex Luthor can just bribe a guard for a key. The catch with all of these is that they all screw Batman if he is in the party, because he can only pick the lock, whereas all the others have powers that solve that problem plus lots of others as well. That's the other problem with the crunchy superhero games, that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prRySgsgtnM is eternally in place.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:11
|
|
|
Yes, if * Super Strength * Super Speed * Locking picking all cost the same, then Batman is a bad hero and you're playing a bad system.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:22
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:22
|
|
|
hyphz posted:They're from Game Night, or variants of those. Read Game Night. It's great. Or, you know, the GURPS equivalent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:40
|
|
|
hyphz posted:I once joked that there should be an RPG where all the stats are inverted - Weakness, Clumsiness, Frailty, etc - and you choose your weaknesses instead of your strengths - on the grounds that they will tend to contribute more to the focus of play time than strengths will, since strengths just resolve problems quickly. But again there would be a massive resonance failure because players want to play "a big strong kick-rear end warrior", not "a guy who's helpless in front of a wizard". Goon game designer Erika Chappell did one of these in her The Way Home, a PbtA based on Over the Garden Wall. Your stats are Cowardice, Distrust, Ignorance, Indulgence and Anger. You array is -2, -1, 0, +1, and +3. quote:Your highest action stat is your Flaw, the specific shortcoming that got This is a roll-low game. A hit is a 6-, 7-9 is a partial failure, and a 10+ is a disaster. quote:Withdraw There's a lot of clever game design in a 28 page pdf with a cover and character sheet.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 20:46
|
|
|
hyphz posted:(Also, XD's game is making me appreciate how many of the issues I had with PbtA are actually issues with PbtA spin-offs that aren't as well designed as AW was and haven't had the benefit of a revision pass.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2020 21:16
|
|
|
Ilor posted:This. A lot of people rushed to copy AW's mechanics without necessarily understanding the design space and how the game is expressly designed to accomplish certain things. Well keep in mind we're still playing a hack of it, but while I'm far from a great GM I'm good enough to course-correct things and it's less "let's take this system and do something it wasn't intended to do" and more "I want the tone of an end of the world game, but I just want it with matchlocks and stuff so we'll kit-bash it a bit and give all the guns the reload and messy tags, that seem fair?" Also even the bad PbtA spin-offs I'd argue are "meh" rather than really bad. I'm not itching to play Dungeon World or nothing and I have a whole pile of criticism but I'd rather play it than 3e for book-keeping reasons alone. Meanwhile stuff like Monsterhearts 2e looks absolutely amazing if that's the kind of game people want to play. (I do and everyone would be new resident doctors in an ER but also they're like fishmen and werewolves and poo poo. It's like Grey's Anatomy but with a vampire. Fight me if that doesn't sound amazing.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 01:53
|
|
|
Ilor posted:This. A lot of people rushed to copy AW's mechanics without necessarily understanding the design space and how the game is expressly designed to accomplish certain things. One of my most minor bugbears is that it's a shame that AW is the system that everybody decided to turn into a general purpose system. Not because it's bad, it's just the best thing about AW's rules is in its specifics, while Dogs In The Vineyard turns into a great general system in about five seconds. I made a pulpy swords & sorcery DITV almost entirely on the fly.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 02:21
|
|
|
e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jul 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 02:32
|
|
|
AW is by no means a general system but it's eminently reskinnable so long as that's the tone you're trying to go for. I could probably run a decent game that was being inspired by.... pulling poo poo out of my head at random, Spartacus (the show), The Deerslayer, The Revenant, The Duelists, and idk loving Ghosts of Mars without too much trouble. I'm not gonna say it's gonna be smooth sailing, but I feel confident that I could do all of those after staring into space for a bit and making sure it works and talking with the players. People started treating it as a panacea which is dumb for many reasons, but so long as you want lots of conflict in your game and people making bad decisions, it does that in spades and just needs a little care. Honestly it's just like gear and stuff that has to change ("Okay the chopper is now like a steppe nomad raider so his bike is a horse and his gang are wearing stolen silk, k") If the story you're trying to tell is one that the moves reinforce, it'll probably be at least okay. The problem (in my idiot opinion) is that lots of people ignore that first conjunct. If you're jumping from car to car in a post-apocalypse or running from Pictish raiders in 200AD isn't the issue, it's the question of if you want your game to have that done. No poo poo it's not gonna out of the box be a good simulator of Sense and Sensibilty*, just like a shovel isn't a good tool for chopping firewood. *If someone does the work to make that, I would play its balls off, by the way.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 02:34
|
|
|
As I said in some Discord chat somewhere last week, every good story game is also a work of literary criticism.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 03:16
|
|
|
Zorak of Michigan posted:As I said in some Discord chat somewhere last week, every good story game is also a work of literary criticism. Not always but when done well, yeah, basically.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 03:22
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:I could probably run a decent game that was being inspired by.... Well I know what I'm running next. Gonna make everyone watch it too. Goddamn.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 04:45
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:The problem (in my idiot opinion) is that lots of people ignore that first conjunct. If you're jumping from car to car in a post-apocalypse or running from Pictish raiders in 200AD isn't the issue, it's the question of if you want your game to have that done. No poo poo it's not gonna out of the box be a good simulator of Sense and Sensibilty*, just like a shovel isn't a good tool for chopping firewood. Are you familiar with Good Society? It's more Belonging Outside Belonging, but it's extremely Jane Austen.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 05:22
|
|
|
Glazius posted:Are you familiar with Good Society? It's more Belonging Outside Belonging, but it's extremely Jane Austen. O I'm very familiar and just dying to play it. I'm just the only fully on Austen nerd in my group so it's a genre clash. I was thinking about it when I typed that example. (Come to my discord and run it for me, my private Mr Darcy)
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 05:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 19:14 |
|
|
Glazius posted:Are you familiar with Good Society? It's more Belonging Outside Belonging, but it's extremely Jane Austen. LARP version of this sounds nuts.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2020 05:41
|
|